


What grows into the woods

by Maximonstre



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Hansel and Gretel Elements, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 11:04:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19424683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maximonstre/pseuds/Maximonstre
Summary: Once upon a time, in a forest, lived a woodsman, his  wife, their son and their nephew. And deep, deep in the woods the nephew will learn of magic and of dark circumstances and of dark, beautiful men...





	What grows into the woods

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Hall of Mirrors](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/496816) by Silver Pard. 



Once upon a time, in a deep, deep forest, lived a woodsman, his wife, their son and their nephew. The nephew had lived with them since they found him on their doorstep a long time ago.

The woodsman and his wife saw him as a hindrance, and a burden. To pay them back, the boy was told to do all the house chores while the son watched, laughing at him and eating, eating, eating.

The boy said nothing, knowing he would only be punished if he tried to defend himself. He knew that he only had to wait a few years, and then, he would be free.

* * *

But suddenly, the wife fell sick.

She coughed and coughed and coughed, and wouldn't even get out of bed to shout at the boy. The son stopped eating. The woodsman kept going to the forest.

They all knew that her medicine was expensive, and they lived far in the woods. Soon, the woodsman's sister came to help the poor family. One night, as the boy laid in his cupboard after having awaken from a nightmare with a woman shouting, he heard voices in the kitchen. He opened his cupboard slowly. It was the woodsman and his sister.

"It's become more and more difficult to provide for them, Marge. And she doesn't heal..."

"I hear you, brother. I knew, when you told me that you were to marry her, that she would only bring problems with her. I knew it deep in my bones. Remember, she had no dowry, and let's not talk about her sister... I'm glad that one quickly disappeared. But then you had to care for her nephew, too! Brother, she's exploiting you. I'm sure she's faking her disease. "

"Do you think so? It's true that she didn't cough so much these last few days... And she seems fine when she's talking with our son..."

"Brother, that woman is a liar. You know what? We should bring her deep into the woods. We'll leave her in a clearing far, far away. I'm sure she'll stop her pretense once she sees that nobody will help her. She'll come around and come back here, and she'll resume her work around the house."

"But... But Marge, what if she isn't faking it?"

"Then all the more reason to get rid of her, right? She won't be of any help, and she's only a hole in our expenses."

The woodsman didn't say anything, but he looked pensive. The boy quickly closed his cupboard, his heart beating fast.

The following morning, the wife had disappeared.

She didn't come back.

* * *

The woodsman's sister quickly became the new lady of the house. The son wasn't allowed to eat as much as before. In fact, he wasn't allowed to eat at all, apart from a loaf of bread in the evening, exactly like the boy. He began to lose weight incredibly fast. The woodsman wasn't home often, because he had to work twice as much as before; indeed, his wife wasn't here anymore to sell the clothes she sewed at the market. And the boy hadn't learned to create clothes. They managed to keep living this way for a few more years, enough to nearly be able to call the boy a man.

But soon, the boy heard whispers in the little kitchen, again. He knew why. He didnt even bother listening.

* * *

The woodsman and his sister brought the son and the boy deep, deep in the woods. The boy didn't try to remember the path. The woodsman and his sister invented a game of hide and seek. They disappeared. After a few hours of searching, the son was on the verge of tears. He hadn't yet learned to accept that sometimes, people that were supposed to care for you simply... didn't. The boy looked at him in the eyes.

"Do you really want to come back? These people have killed your mother. Don't pretend you're not smart enough to have guessed it. They've offered us the smallest mercy when they didn't directly kill us. We can't go back. Do you understand?"

The son nodded through his tears. They began to walk. Neither of them had learned how to hunt when the wife was still alive, the boy too busy cleaning the floor, and the son too busy eating. They grew more and more hungry. It became difficult to walk. It became difficult to breathe.

And then, in front of their eyes, the trees opened to reveal a little clearing where a little house made of what seemed to be gingerbread stood proudly. The roof was made of colorful sugar. The door of chocolate. Unable to resist, or even to think, the son and even the normally cautious boy ran towards it and began to desperately eat. It had been days since their last meal. They had been able to drink thanks to the rain they had collected, but their stomachs were hopelessly empty.

Suddenly, black vines shot up from the grass and formed an intrinsically bound cage around the son, who screamed. The boy only looked, petrified. A piercing voice resonated around them.

"Well, well, well, what have we got here... Children graciously coming to help me... How kind of you..."

A woman stepped out of the house and walked towards them. She lifted the cage without effort, and went back towards the door. She stopped in front of her home, looking over her shoulder.

"If you don't want your cousin to die here, alone, you'd better follow us."

The son had become a companion of sorts to the boy, during their shared misfortune. He followed. The door closed with an ominous sound behind him. The woman put the cage on the floor of a little room that only contained a big oven, then closed the door and reported her attention on the boy, who looked at her silently. Her face was hidden behind a veil, but she was tall and skinny, and had distorted hands with strangely long nails.

After a long silence, she declared:

"I can sense potential in you, boy. Do you want to stay and to learn? I don't have any heir. I'm inclined to teach you what I know."

"Are you going to eat my cousin?"

"Not for a long time. He's all skin and bones. I need to fatten him up first," answered the witch. "But you shouldn't care about him. He's nothing. That should be your first lesson. Caring only brings destruction. After all, that is why you are here."

The boy said nothing for a minute, then slowly nodded. Even if he couldn't see her, he knew the witch was smiling.

* * *

"Have you managed to find her weakness, yet?" asked his cousin in a shaky mutter.

The boy shook his head. The witch had charged him to feed his cousin. It was the perfect time to regroup and to conceive a plan to escape. The cousin had become more and more scared. The boy had tried to reassure him but to no avail.

Days and weeks passed by, and the cousin slowly began to grow big again.

They all knew what it meant.

* * *

A truth, a deeply, deeply buried truth that the boy didn't like to contemplate: the witch was fascinating.

"Don't tell me your name," the witch had harshly said when the boy had opened his mouth, once. "Names have power, you idiot. Don't tell your name to anyone."

So the boy began to call her Auntie. And, oh, Auntie knew wonders and disasters like the back of her distorted hands, and she could bring illnesses and storms and seemed to have the entire universe bottled on her shelves.

The boy only remembered that he needed to run far, far away at the end of each week, when she would ask:

"How fat is your cousin today?"

* * *

Once, as the boy was out to harvest herbs the witch had requested, he tumbled into a little clearing. There were dozens of little mounds of earth that filled it. The boy let the herbs fall on the ground and contemplated the little piles for a long time. Soon, he heard a slow brushing of the leaves, and light steps. A soft voice resonated through the clearing.

"Had you never seen them?"

He silently turned. A tall man was standing behind him. He was terribly beautiful. The kind of unreal beauty that whispered of magic. The boy slowly shook his head, looking at the man's red eyes. The man smiled.

"What's your name, boy?"

"You can keep calling me boy for now. I still haven't decided if I should keep my name or take a new one, you see," he answered. The man kept looking at him, silently circling him.

"Oh well, I see your auntie has taken her role seriously. Are you a witch yet, boy?"

The boy shook his head again.

"So you don't know what these little piles are, do you?"

The smile was as sharp as a knife.

"I can guess," answered the boy quietly. The man seemed pleased.

"Smart boy. You can call me Voldemort for now. We will meet again."

And then the man disappeared behind the leaves. The boy looked one last time at the mounds of earth, then slowly walked back to the house made of candy.

* * *

The witch taught him how to make potions that brought death and love in the same sip, and rites that slowed aging, and which animals to catch to be able to see the whereabouts of the nearest town.

The cousin had stopped talking, his belly growing softer and softer, his gaze becoming emptier and emptier. The cousin could see what the boy couldn't. He could see that he was losing him.

* * *

One night, the witch turned to him, her veil, as always, masking her face.

"You've seen the clearing, haven't you, boy?"

The boy simply nodded.

"And you've seen that man."

It wasn't a question.

"Stay away from him, and from his red eyes. He has always brought trouble with him and with his smile."

* * *

He went back to the clearing. He contemplated the places where the earth had been shifted. Soon the man joined him. The boy looked at him, at this being that was so beautiful it hurt.

Nothing could be this beautiful and pretend to be harmless. The man stared at his green eyes, seemingly fascinated.

"When will you stop being a boy?"

The boy smiled.

"Soon."

* * *

A few days later, the boy delicately put back on the table the frog they were gutting and looked at the witch.

"These piles in the clearing," he said.

"They're yours," he said.

"Aren't they?" he said.

The witch stayed silent for a few endless seconds. Then she faced the boy.

"You know who I am."

The boy didn't hesitate.

"Petunia Dursley."

Slowly, oh so slowly, Petunia raised her hands and let her veil fall. She finally appeared in front of his eyes, the witch, Auntie, _Petunia_.

She began to speak softly.

"When I was a little girl, I used to live in the woods with my parents and my little sister. On her eleventh summer, the White Man came to her. He whisked her away to learn magic. My parents were terrified, but they loved her enough not to report her to the Church. I was jealous, boy. Magic didn't flow in my veins like it did in hers. I couldn't follow her.

That is, until I met the man with red eyes. We made a deal, that night. He would teach me what he could. I learned there was a way for me to touch magic, too. It was a very different path than the one my sister had been offered, but I decided to take it anyway. I wanted power, boy, and all that it could offer. And the man knew it."

She stopped, then, and she examined the boy.

"I'm sure you can imagine what I was able to learn."

"Potions. And rites, and sacrifice."

"Sacrifice..." muttered Petunia. "Magic doesn't flow in my veins. If I want to use it, I have to make a sacrifice. For little spells, animals are enough, as I have showed you. But I wanted more... I saw my sister revive flowers, and sing in the language of birds, and I saw her fly. Animals weren't enough."

The boy didn't move.

"They weren't enough... But I knew what was. And I decided that I would do it. I would do the sacrifice."

The witch looked at him in the eyes. The boy didn't flinch. Both of them were thinking of the little clearing.

"But then... Then I made one who mattered. It's the first rule of witches like me: don't let it matter. But he _mattered_. And the woodsman mattered too, that poor fool who knew nothing."

Petunia was breathing slowly.

"I found the man with red eyes. Told him that I wanted out. That I wanted a new life. A life with my son and the woodsman."

She closed her eyes.

"A life for a life. The next day, I found you on our doorstep. I never saw the man again."

They stayed silent for a few seconds. And then the boy declared:

"But Auntie, it's your son you're fattening up in the cage."

Petunia opened her eyes, stared at him again.

"The day the woodsman left me to die in the woods, I remembered who I really was. All these years spent catering to their needs, all these wonders I had given up for them... only to get tossen away at the first sign of weakness. I don't know what I was thinking during all this time, but I know that's why I fell sick. That life wasn't for me. I deserved more. That day, I became the witch again, and I observed you grow from far away. Boy, your cousin is not my son. He's your sacrifice. I was so happy when the White Man didn't come to you. Because that meant you were like me. I could see it in your eyes."

The boy looked at her, and slowly nodded. The witch smiled. Her teeth were very sharp.

"It's time. Come with me."

They walked to the room with the cage. The boy felt as if he was moving very, very slowly. The cousin lifted his head when they entered, his eyes emptyemptyempty. He didn't look surprised.

"Light the oven on, boy."

The boy was looking at the cousin. He turned towards the witch.

"Auntie, you taught me well, but I'm sorry, I never learned how to turn it on."

Petunia grumbled but approached it herself. Soon, her head was disappearing in the hole of the fireplace. The boy walked slowly, slowly towards her, his cousin a silent witness.

"It's not so complicated, you could have at least tried," said the witch, her voice resonating strangely.

"I know," answered the boy.

And then, with all the magic he could find in himself, with all the magic the witch didn't believe he possessed, he pushed her in the oven and closed its door. He quickly released his cousin, who was finally beginning to look alive. They ran out of the house, but they could still hear her terrible screams, even from outside, and they could still smell her burning skin. They looked at the crumbling house together, and the cousin pretended not to see the tears flowing down the boy's face.

After a long time, the boy gave a little duffel bag full of meat and sweets to his cousin, and he said:

"Go to the north. In three days, you will have reached the city."

The cousin simply looked at him, eyes emptyemptyempty. The boy said:

"It will be alright."

The cousin disappeared.

The screams stopped.

* * *

The man silently appeared next to the boy, and smiled at him. He really was beautiful. Well, it didn't matter. The boy could be dangerous too.

"I am Tom. Who are you?"

The boy, but not quite a boy now, smiled.

"I am Harry."

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first one shot... I hope you liked it! Please tell me what you think, reviews are always a delight! :)


End file.
